A pool party

Last night was Calvin's first trip to a pool.  Unfortunately for him it was only that, a trip to the pool and not an actual swim in the pool since he's a little young for chlorine and is still having some trouble with the skin on his shoulders.  But we weren't really there for the prime swimming anyhow, we were there for dinner.  Not as weird as it sounds, since we were joining Jon's bosses and their daughter and friends for a poolside evening complete with dinner from the country club.  It was beautiful and cool evening and both the food and the company were great, so we think Calvin had a nice time even without getting to go swimming.
In other news, we are finally experiencing baby meltdown.  Calvin's sleep schedule has been off for nearly a week now and sleep deprivation is starting to set in - for all three of us.  We figure it's about time since we hadn't experienced true lack of sleep yet, even when he was a newborn.  The real problem of the weekend, though, was that he was also having some trouble nursing, so we visited the doctor again today.  As always, Calvin wowed them with his rate of growth - he weighed in at 11 pounds, 3 ounces (a pound more than he weighed a week ago), and measured just shy of 24 inches.  Grow baby grow!  Obviously, nursing trouble or no, he is getting plenty to eat!  The visit did offer some hope of relief on all fronts and that relief is spelled z-a-n-t-a-c.  The pediatrician thinks that Calvin might be struggling with heartburn (guess he should lay off the chocolate and pizza...) so baby Zantac should help.  We are keeping our fingers crossed.

Calvin in live action!

It's amazing how quickly Calvin is changing, and just recently we have found ourselves getting to the really good part - the part where he is still pretty easy to get along with, but beginning to really respond to us and to his environment. He started smiling over two weeks ago, and added giggles last week, then just a few days ago he started to grab at things, perhaps mostly by accident but he is beginning to work more with his extremities, that's for sure! Though we have nearly an hour of what would be categorized as fairly boring footage by most folks, the following is about a 90 second snippet of some of our favorite moments. We especially like how, in the final seconds of the clip, Calvin gets frustrated trying to maneuver the giraffe and takes it out on the elephant: "what are you looking at? I'll just bop you in the face and then you won't laugh at me anymore for not being able to chew on this giraffe! Hah!"

Just Calvin having Saturday fun

Calvin wants you to know that being a baby is hard work - you don't even get the weekends off!  It's Saturday afternoon and already he has played games, eaten, endured several diaper changes, and napped - twice!

Playing the "standing" game (likes to stand, but needs help with balance).

 
Smiling in the magic fingers (read: bouncy chair)

 Hearing a story before naptime in the nursery 

A growing boy needs his own car

Calvin is a growing boy.  He's gotten so big that we thought we'd better get him used to sleeping in the crib because we don't know how much longer he can stay in the bassinet in our room.  We made that decision even before our suspicions about his growth had been confirmed as they were during an impromptu visit to the doctor this afternoon.  Though he wasn't supposed to see the doctor again until mid August we were a little concerned about a rash on his neck and wanted it checked out.  The positive sides to the visit were the weigh in and measuring - 10lbs 4oz, 22.75inches - and the affirmation that the rash was nothing.  The negative side to the visit was having to see a different doctor who decided that we should be concerned about Calvin's level of jaundice, even though our usual pediatrician had already decided it was just a normal case of breastfeeding juandice and nothing to worry about.  The ensuing heel prick and blood letting for the bilirubin test was more upsetting to Cortney than to Calvin, but was stressful all around. 

Which is why we decided to treat ourselves to a nice evening out.  Since a rainstorm swept through just as Calvin was finishing at the doctor the air cooled down sufficiently for all of us to enjoy a stroll through the Ann Arbor Rolling Sculptures Car Show downtown.  We figured that this was an especially good choice for the evening since Calvin will soon be needing his own car.  Unfortunately they didn't have any Power Wheels for us to look at, but Jon was considering either the Chrysler Imperial or the Corvette.  Calvin thought both sounded good and was full of smiles when we got home - we were even able to catch one on camera!

No plan is a good plan

You can read that title two different ways, of course.  Either it is generally good to have no plan, or all plans are inherently bad.  We are definitely finding the first to be true, and the latter might be also but the jury is still out on that.  In any case, we attempted several times over the last week to actually watch a movie and were foiled each time by Calvin's strange scheduling.  Prior to the weekend Calvin had been fairly relaxed in his eating pattern, often going 5 hours without a meal, sometimes more at night.  But this past weekend it was every 2-3 hours, even at night, making Friday and Saturday nights our first really sleepless ones since we came home from the hospital, so we didn't have the energy for an evening movie (and we're not talking about going out, but simply a rented flick).  But Sunday finally saw the return of "normal," and Monday he let us sleep for 6 hours, followed by another 4 (that's more sleep than we got in a night before he arrived).  Then last night he seemed so relaxed while Jon was giving him his evening meal (the second time Calvin enjoyed expressed milk from a bottle) that we were brave enough to stay up a little later and watch a movie.  Luckily we were treated to a repeat of Monday night, we just didn't sleep for the first 3 hours of the 8:30pm to 2:40am 6 hour stint.  Ah well, these are the toughest decisions we go through these days - do we want the extra sleep, or do we want a little "us" time.